OAKLAND / Tragic end to a life of service / Trade, job project founder, 83, killed at Amtrak crossing

A long freight train was blocking Broadway right by Jack London Square in Oakland on Tuesday afternoon, moving slowly, the freight cars creaking and rumbling down the Embarcadero where two Union Pacific tracks cross the street.

The freight train stopped right in the middle of Broadway. The metal arms of the crossing guards blocked the street, the warning bells clanging while the train just sat there. Then the train started up, slowly. The crowd waiting to cross surged ahead, eager to get around the last freight car.

Just then, its horn blaring, came an Amtrak passenger train on the other track, headed in the opposite direction at under 25 mph. Startled, the pedestrians jumped back, out of the way. All but one.

She was Lucie Buchbinder, one of the founders of the Bread Project, which helped poor people learn a trade and get a good job. She was 83 years old and an urban legend in Berkeley and Oakland -- "an amazing person with the energy of an 18-year-old," said Susan Philips, a friend and colleague.

"I saw the train hit her," said Emily Sanchez, who was waiting in a car to cross the tracks. "The train hit her, and her things went flying," Sanchez said. The street was littered with Buchbinder's things -- books, papers, the sort of thing people carry on their way home.

Buchbinder's body lay on the street for a long time; she was dead on arrival in the hospital.

It was a sad end for a woman who had given so much to so many.

She had a long career developing public and low-cost housing in San Francisco before retiring years ago. It was then her real work began.

"She wasn't ready to retire," said Berkeley City Councilwoman Linda Maio, who knew Buchbinder well. At one time, she started three nonprofit housing corporations in the Bay Area, and then later she and Philips started the Bread Project. The first baking class graduated in 2001, when Buchbinder was in her late 70s.

"The Bread Project was a fantastic concept," Maio said. "It took folks who had problems and trained them." They learned how to be bakers, making all kinds of pastry.

They also learned job skills, how to dress, how to get ready for a job interview, how to work. It taught people who had been ground down by life how to be a success. The program, which earned many honors, was rigorous. Its latest graduating class just finished up this spring at the Berkeley Adult School. More than 430 people have gone through the Bread Project.

Philips said: "Lucie worked full time in volunteer work. She worked 50 and 60 hours a week to get the Bread Project started.

"She was also a political animal," she said. She knew how to get political support, to get financial help from foundations and corporations. "She was very energetic. She could run me into the ground."

Her husband, Martin Dreyfuss, said: "She was just a good person. She was so vibrant. She had so many friends."

Lucie Buchbinder was born in Vienna to a Jewish family that fled to the United States when Germany under the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. As a teenager, she first lived in New York City, where she had relatives, and then took a bus across the country to a new life in Sacramento.

She attended UC Berkeley, then UCLA, and she taught English at Cal for a while. She was married twice and had four children.

"The irony of living for 83 years and being killed like that ..." Freeman didn't finish the sentence.

The train that killed Buchbinder was traveling south from Sacramento, headed for its last stop at Jack London Square, Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham said. It was slowing down to stop, going slower than 25 mph. Only four passengers were aboard.

The train sounded its horn, and the engine had flashing white lights, Graham said. The crossing gates were working, she said.

"Something should be done about that crossing," Philips said. "Something should be done."

"She had a lot more life in her, and talent in her to give to the world."